crackdown not stopping sanukers

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Bangkok (dpa) - International tourist arrivals to Thailand during

the first half of this year exceeded the five million mark, notching

up a 7.86 per cent increase compared with the same period in 2000,

the government's tourism authority revealed on Monday.

According to the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), the number

of people who visited the kingdom between January and June was

5,003,691, with nearly 60 per cent of them coming from East Asia.

Japanese proved the single largest tourist market for Thailand,

with 611,902 Japanese visitors during the first six months, up 8 per

cent. Chinese visitors reached 338,578, a 17.7 per cent decline.

European tourists during the same period totalled 1,175,436

visitors, up 8.6 per cent.

Tourism is Thailand's leading foreign exchange earner. Last year,

9.5 million people travelled to the country, where they spent an

estimated 285 billion baht (6.3 billion dollars) on hotels and

services, according to TAT statistics.

This year, Thailand hopes to lure 10.3 million tourists and earn

receipts worth at least 320 billion baht.

While the government of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has

targetted tourism as a key sector for saving the economy this year,

some question whether his ongoing crackdown on the country's

notorious "nightlife" industry will result in scaring tourists away.

Since April this year, the government has been forcing bars and

restaurants in Bangkok to close at 1:00 a.m., the legal limit for

night time entertainment spots although it has long been ignored.

Sompop Mynarangsan, an economics lecturer at Chulalongkorn

University, has warned that the crackdown could affect tourism as

many visitors came to Thailand to sample its nightlife.

One indication of this - of the 5 million tourists who visited

Thailand in the first half of this year, some 60 per cent were male.